(548e) Calibration of the Charge-Coupled Device Camera Based Microscopic Particle Tracking and Microrheology

Video-based particle-tracking technique has been widely applied as a tool to promote our understanding in both physical and biological systems. In biological system, this technique has been used to document the dynamics of a probe-labeled sub-cellular component, such as a nuclear body and a transmembrane protein. On the other hand, the mechanical properties of a complex fluid system can be probed by single- or two-particle microrheology, in which video-based particle-tracking is essential to validate the accuracy of the results from these measurements. In recent years, this technique becomes even more prominent since the physical and biological applications have been emerging together as ballistically intracellular nanorheology (BIN) to examine the mechanical changes of the cytoplasmic region of a mammalian cell upon the extracellular chemical and mechanical stimuli. However, while the applications of this technique are promising, the spatial errors generated from the imaging acquisition process could significantly hinder the progression and further block the extension of this technique. Therefore, in this report, we systematically address the how to experimentally refine the spatial errors from a video-based particle-tracking system to advance this technique.